


Always Be Specific When You Lie

by TheMoo



Category: NCIS
Genre: Gen, Half comedy, Half hurt/comfort, Spoiler for SWAK.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-10
Updated: 2019-03-10
Packaged: 2019-11-15 00:32:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18063155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheMoo/pseuds/TheMoo
Summary: Rule Number 7: Always be specific when you lie.  Both Gibbs and Ducky have occasion to lie to their younger co-workers. How specific does each one have to be? (By the way, the sequel to this is "Sometimes You're Wrong").





	Always Be Specific When You Lie

**Author's Note:**

> The Moo confesses that at the time of writing this she is new to the fandom and has not seen every episode. Thus there is a risk of canonical errors. Do, please bring them to my attention for the purpose of education, if you find same.

Passing by Tim’s desk, Abby caught sight of a picture displayed on Tim’s screen. It was a head and shoulders shot of a young man. The photograph was black and white and somewhat grainy. Ziva paused and looked over Tim’s shoulder to study the shot further. 

“That is not bad,” Abby observed. “Ziva, come have a look it this. What do you think?”

Tim moved a finger to minimize the image but Abby slapped his hand lightly. “Leave it!” she commanded, as though giving an order to a dog. Tim complied.

Tony moved his eyes in their direction, brow wrinkled with concern, but did not dignify the goings-on with his full attention. Yet.

Ziva came to stand at Abby’s shoulder and the two women peered past the seated Tim to look at his screen, or rather the young man pictured on the screen. Although the picture was black and white, it was clear that the man’s colouring was fair. He was looking down and slightly to the left with a serious, intense expression.

“I think that is very good,” Ziva opined. 

“You’d do that, right?” Abby asked.

With an appreciative smile Ziva said, “I would do that – with a beating heart.”

“Do that in a heart-beat,” intoned both Tim and Tony, in unison, although Tony was still refusing to turn his head.

“I’d do him twice. Then take him to a hair stylist. Then take him home and do him again.” Was Abby’s addition.

“Rrrrowr.” Ziva purred like a cat.

Tony gave up trying to appear detached, and joined the women behind Tim. “This is from the sixties, you realize, ladies. I mean, look at those bangs.” Tony ran a hand over his own coiffure as though showing its superiority.

“I could get used to the bangs,” Ziva said. 

Tim, Tony and even Abby sniggered slightly at Ziva’s inadvertent double-entrendre. 

“I’ll bet you could,” Tony muttered.

“If that was another correction of my American slang, I do not want to hear it,” Ziva shot back. “Tim, who is this?”

“I don’t actually know. Found it in some archival footage. We don’t have identification that far back, but from the quality of the picture, the clothes . . .”

“. . . and the hair,” Tony added

“Right, and the general composition I’m thinking it has to be the sixties.”

“Which means that this guy, if he’s even still alive, doesn’t look like this anymore.” Tony waived a dismissive hand at the picture on the screen.

“It’s okay, Tony. You’re kinda good looking, too. You’re just a different type. I mean, look at this guy. Cool. Dangerous.” Abby’s voice dropped into a wistful sigh. “Smoldering. You, Tony, you’re - I dunno - cute. Definitely cute.” She turned to Ziva for confirmation. “Cute?”

Ziva shrugged.

“Smoldering? For God’s sake, Abby, it’s just a picture. I’m a real live man.” Tony jerked his thumbs towards his chest. “If anybody is going to be smoldering around here . . . “

Mallard walked in just at that moment and picked up Tony’s words with a smile. “It will most certainly be I, Anthony. We older men have a distilled quality that it will take you years to acquire. Not unlike fine brandy.”

Abby took the old man by the shoulders and marched him over to Tim’s screen. “Ducky, did you ever wear your hair like that?”

Mallard bent down and peered, then straightened. “I most assuredly did, Abigail. When I was that age we all had to wear our hair like that. Wanted to look like the Beatles. It wasn’t a bad look, really. And just who is this specimen?”

“I don’t know. I just found him in the archives,” said Tim.

“I see. Well, I expected to find Jethro here, but I see I am mistaken. I will leave this for him.” 

Mallard left a manila folder on Gibbs’ desk and headed out. He paused and shot a final look at the picture on Tim’s screen. “Thank you, my young friends, for this unexpected trip down memory lane. Just, please don’t do this to me very often.” With this, he was out of the squad room.

Tony’s mood remained foul. “Years to acquire. McGee, why don't you do one of those age progression things on this dude. Show these vapid females what they would see if Mister Sixties passed them on the street today.” Then he stepped back from the women and crossed his arms.

While Tim set about finding the relevant software and running the picture through it, Abby chastised Tony. 

“Looks aren’t everything, Tony.”

“Sure they are. Live fast; die young; have a good looking corpse. Knock on Any Door. Nineteen forty-nine.”

“Is that what Kate did?” Tim said softly, without looking up from his computer.

“Point taken.” Tony sobered suddenly and went back to sit behind his own desk.

“Anyway, that’s a stupid idea,” said Abby. “I mean, you don’t usually get to choose death. Sometimes, but mostly it just gets you, you know. Even you agents. You guys die off sooner than the general population. But you’re still trying to stay alive as long as you can.”

“So, is that what the whole goth thing is about? Trying to control the Reaper?” Tony said, looking at her seriously. “And you’re wrong, Abbs. More people choose to die than you would think.”

“That is something I cannot understand,” said Ziva. 

“I hate to interrupt this cheerful conversation, but I’m done here.” Tim said. With a final flourish on his keyboard he announced, “And the winner is: him.”

Ziva and Abby immediately lost interest in the philosophical discussion and came in as closely behind Tim as they could. 

Tony remained at his desk, now resting his lips against steepled fingertips, unmoving. 

Tim set up the two shots side by side on his screen: the picture from the sixties and the new image, of the mystery man - aged to his mid seventies.

For a moment he, Ziva and Abby studied the screen. 

“I know that face,” Abby said.

Tim said, “We all know that face.”

“Print those,” Ziva suddenly commanded.

“Never mind that, just send them to Ducky. Now, Tim!” Abby cried out.

Ziva and Abby rushed to the elevator, Tim following a few steps behind slowed only slightly by the sending of the files. In their excitement none of the three registered the fact that Tony remained silently at his desk.

**************

Gibbs came in to find Tony alone and apparently not doing anything. Everyone gone but Tony just sitting there? Not a good sign. 

Gibbs then glanced at the file folder Mallard had left on his desk. Not urgent. Nothing else in the squad room was different from how he left it, so nothing else demanded his immediate attention. Back to Tony, then. 

“Di Nozzo. Where is everybody?”

“Oh, yeah. Hi, Boss. They’ve all gone down to the morgue to torment Ducky.”

Why the youngsters should be tormenting Mallard was not of immediate concern. If that were Tony’s problem, he’d be babbling about it by now. Something else was bothering the boy.

Reluctantly, Gibbs prodded him. “And you remained behind? I’d have thought you’d be leading the inquisition,” Gibbs settled at his own desk and watched for Tony’s reaction. The young man did not rise to the bait. Damn. 

All he got from Tony was a laconic Monty Python quotation, delivered with no real enthusiasm. “Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition,” Tony intoned, and did not finish the rest of the reference. The boy was in some kind of deep funk.

“Spill it, Di Nozzo. I haven’t got all day.” In fact, Gibbs was fearing that he might indeed need the rest of the day to untwist whatever knots Tony had tied himself into. Still, he pitched his voice in a sufficiently authoritative low-register to force Tony to talk.

“I’m a coward, boss.” Tony folded his arms on his desk and dropped his head onto them.

“Oh, really?” It was enough to open the flood gates, for which Gibbs was grateful although it was never pleasant when the kids had to spill their guts. 

“We were talking about dying. Stupid conversation. What does talking about dying have to do with really dying? You don’t talk about it. You do it. You make a choice. Abby’s wrong. You be brave and you live, or you give up and you die. I had a choice.”

With this, Tony’s shoulders began to heave slightly and the young agent made coughing sounds. He was about to start crying for sure, and once that started, the process of finding out the real problem would not be speeded up in any way. There would be sobbing and consoling and comforting to get through. Jesus, Di Nozzo. Oh well, as Shannon had once told him about childbirth, the only way out of it was through it. 

One thing to do in preparation first, though. Keep everybody else out of the room. Tony’s head was down, so Gibbs was able to pull out his phone without Tony noticing. Gibbs sent a text message to Mallard telling him to keep everyone with him in the morgue until Gibbs told him it was safe to release them all. 

This accomplished he addressed Tony again. “Tell me about it.” Thank God it needed so little to get the voluble Italian talking. 

“You remember when I had the plague,” Tony began.

“Not about to forget it.”

“And you came to my room and you talked to me. I was dying, Gibbs. I knew I was. I didn’t have any fight left in me. It was like – every time some air tried to get inside me it ripped my chest apart, the pain was so bad. So I decided – and I remember this was just before you came to me – I decided I wasn’t going to suffer anymore. Just – no more air. Not even going to try. Just stop breathing. No more pain. I was going to give up. I swear to God,” Tony blubbered.

“That a fact?”

Tony lifted his head, his face clearly tear-streaked. “And you saved me. I was a coward. I was going to give up. The pain was too much. It was torture. I’m an agent. I’m supposed to withstand torture.”

“And you have. Don’t forget that,” Gibbs offered.

“But not that time! Don’t you see? I gave up and started to die. And I’d have done it if you hadn’t come in. You told me I wasn’t going to die. You hit me on the head. You gave me a new cell phone. You made me live. I didn’t want to. I should have had the courage to hang on myself. I didn’t. You had to come and do it for me. I’m so ashamed.”

Rule number 7, here we come, Gibbs thought. 

Gibbs took a steadying breath, then slid his chair close to Tony’s. Then he rolled the young man’s chair close enough to take him by the shoulders and rest his head against Gibb’s own jacket. “Aw, Tony. Is that how you remember it? Tell me what you remember.”

Tony raised his head, and detached from Gibbs. He stood up. “I remember it all. It’s burned into me, Boss. You came into the isolation room and you told that Pitt I wasn’t contagious. Then you leaned down to me, real close, right by my face and told me not to die. Damn it, Gibbs, you ordered me not die! I was going to die. I really was. I was going to stop breathing. That minute I was gonna.”

“Okay, okay, calm down. Stick to the facts. You were deciding to stop breathing. You were planning to make yourself die. And I came in and said no. That right?”

“And you hit me on the head! Who hits a dying man on the head?”

“I would, if I wanted to get his attention, but let’s get back to your testimony, Tony. You’re saying I came into your isolation room and I talked to you. And I hit you on the head. Then what did I do?”

“You gave me a cell phone. You put it in my hand. You said something about changing the number. Something about women calling. Then you walked out. I guess you walked out. I didn’t see where you went.”

Gibbs cleared his throat. “Interesting story. Except it never happened. Not like that, anyway.”

“Never happened?” Tony started pacing the room, throwing his arms into the air. “What do you mean, never happened? I remember all of it! I remember your face so close to me I could feel your breath. I remember you whispering. I remember the feel of the cell phone in my hand. You want me to believe all of that never happened?”

Gibbs decided he was unlikely to be busted if he told Tony any particular version of that day. The whispered admonition to stay alive. Nobody had heard that but the two of them. The rest about the cell phone. Yes, there were witnesses but it was unlikely any of them would talk to Tony about it. Kate was gone. Mallard wouldn’t talk. Tony would never see Pitt or his crew again. Right after it happened, Tony lost consciousness. 

Whatever I tell Tony now, he will believe. 

******************

“Duck-eeeeeeeeee”, Abby squealed, leading the charge into the morgue.

“You deceived us!” Ziva declared. She grabbed the sleeve of the old man’s lab coat and led him away from the cadaver on which he was working to a computer terminal, where Tim was already retrieving the images.

“I did no such thing. You asked me whether I wore my hair in a certain way. I told you that I did. Where do you find any deception in that?”

“It wasn’t the whole truth,” Abby said. “You should have told us this picture is you. It’s you, Ducky. We got you dead to rights. Tim, show him.”

Mallard eased himself out of Ziva’s grasp and looked at the pictures on the screen.

“Ah, yes. I’ve been inconvenienced in airports more than a few times by border guards mistaking me for this gentleman. But not for at least forty years now. I’d hoped that was all at an end.” He looked at the agents and smiled. “I recall being detained for nearly seventy-two hours in Schipol because no one would believe I was not he. The resemblance is remarkable. Right down to the part in the hair.”

“You want us to believe that isn’t you?” Tim asked.

“I don’t particularly care except I have to tell you – I think I was much better looking.”

“So, who is he?” said Ziva.

“Never met the man. I only know what I was told: he was some kind of American operative going by the unlikely name of Ilya Kuryakin. It showed some style, I recall thinking at the time. The Cold War in full rage, but he worked for the Americans using a Russian name. And of course, I approved of the hair. It was a different era,” he concluded, wistfully.

“Are we going to let him get away with this?” Tim said.

“I say we interrogate him further,” Ziva declared. “I can make an old man talk.”

“No, Gibbs won’t allow you to hurt him, Ziva. We have to let him go.” Tim said. “Come on, let’s get back to work. Say, what happened to Tony? He missed all this.”

“Probably still sulking. Who can believe a man can be so obsessed with his own looks,” Ziva sniffed.

“I’m back to my lab then,” said Abby. She turned to waggle a playful finger at the old doctor. “Oooooooh, you. You are so busted.”

Mallard was consulting his phone, receiving Gibbs’ message to keep everyone away from the squad room.

“One moment, all of you. I have orders from Jethro. I’m to keep all of you down here until further notice. No one is to leave this room until he sounds the all clear.”

“Did he say why?” asked Ziva.

Tim laughed at her. “Sometimes Gibbs let’s you ask why. Not often. You have to choose your moments. I’m thinking this isn’t one of them.”

“Well, then, you may all amuse yourselves as you wish. I have work to do.” Mallard returned to his cadaver.

******************** 

“Come here, Tony. And listen to me. Are you listening?” Gibbs used the same soft tone he had used back then. 

Tony obeyed, coming close to Gibbs. Gibbs took him by the shoulders and once again held Tony against his own chest. Tony snuggled against him like a child. Gibbs made a point of not flinching at the tears and snot making its way onto his jacket.

“I’m listening, Boss.” 

The same words. Almost the same inflection. 

“You were delirious. You’d had a high fever for hours. Whatever you remember, it wasn’t real.”

Tony shook his head without detaching from Gibbs’ jacket. “It was real. I remember.”

“Okay, first thing: No matter what you were thinking – or what you thought you were thinking – nobody can just decide to stop breathing. It’s the lizard brain. The body struggles to breathe – you can’t decide not to. You could have been feeling hopeless and in pain and wanting to die, but you couldn’t have actually made it happen. It wasn’t under your control. Makes no difference what you were thinking. Makes no difference what anybody said to you.”

“No, if you believe that, then why did you tell me not to die? Don’t tell me you didn’t say that. You. Will. Not. Die. You said it. It’s the most important thing anybody ever said to me.”

Tony began sobbing again. Gibbs let it go on for a few minutes. Then he said, “That’s too bad, Di Nozzo, because it didn’t happen. Let me tell you exactly what happened that day.”

Having had enough of hugging, he settled Tony back down in his chair and then sat down again beside him.

“I came down to Bethesda in person to tell the doctors that the bug was dead. I knew if I called them, they wouldn’t believe me right away. I could have called Ducky; he would have believed me. But they wouldn’t have believed HIM either. The only way I could get the message across was to walk into the isolation room myself and show everybody I wasn’t afraid to get close to you. That I wasn’t afraid to touch you. Then they would – maybe – let you and themselves out of isolation. That’s why I came down.”

“You talked to me,” Tony insisted. “You saved me.”

“Nope. You were delirious. Never said a word to you. Wouldn’t have been any point. What I did: I put my face down right close to your face. Let them see me breathing exactly the same air. Then, yeah, I admit, I bopped you on the head. Just to show I wasn’t afraid to touch you. Could have touched your arm, your face, whatever. Slapped your backside. But it could have been the last time I’d ever have a chance to smack you in the head, so I took it.” 

“What about the cell phone? You gave it to me to make me think about life again.”

“Not a bad idea. Next time you get the plague I’ll keep it in mind.”

“I imagined it?”

Gibbs nodded. “It was a hallucination, Tony.”

He smiled at Tony, who smiled back weakly, then said, “You will not die. That’s what you said.”

“Really. Well, that sounds like a sweet thing for me to say. Encourage you. Bring you back to life. Give you hope when all hope is gone. Gotta show real love to say something like that.”

With a quick yank, Gibbs grabbed Tony by the chin and tilted Tony’s face until the two men were looking eye to eye. 

Very slowly and deliberately Gibbs said, “Have. You. Met. Me?”

He released Tony’s face and the younger man leaned back in his chair. He rubbed his hand against his face and noticed his hand had become wet with tears. With a sigh, he started to wipe his hand against his own sleeve. But Gibbs grabbed Tony’s hand and rubbed it against Gibbs’ own lapel instead.

“It’s already full of your snot. Makes no difference now. So, are we clear about this saving business? And about this coward business?”

“Aye aye, boss. Lizard brain. I didn’t have a choice.”

“Good. So, now here’s what’s going to happen.” Gibbs removed his jacket and handed it Tony. “Take this to be dry cleaned. Then go to my house and start drinking. Don’t touch anything, just drink. If there’s anything in the fridge you can eat it. When I get home, I expect to find you passed out drunk and I will not have to talk to you for the rest of the night. I’ll watch you to make sure you don’t get into trouble, but I don’t want to have to talk to you. Talked enough for one day.”

This seemed like the best plan to Gibbs. Get Tony out of the office. Give him a chance to cry some more if he happened to need that. Then keep him under Gibbs' own careful watch for the rest of the night. He hoped Tony would at least make it to the bathroom before barfing. If he didn't, well, the life of an agent can be messy sometimes.

“Appreciate it, Boss, but . . . um . . . thing is . . . I got a date tonight.”

“No, you don’t.”

“No, I don’t,” Tony agreed.

“Then, git.” 

Gibbs inclined his head towards the elevator. Tony shuffled off, somewhat unsteadily.

Once the young man was safely gone, Gibbs texted Mallard to release the others.

*****************************

Tim and Ziva arrived back in the squad room to see Gibbs alone at his desk, reading the report Mallard had left him earlier.

“Where’s Tony?” Ziva asked.

“Dry cleaners,” responded Gibbs, not looking up from the report.

Ziva opened her mouth to ask more, then caught Tim’s eye. You had to pick your moment when to question Gibbs. This wasn’t the moment.

 

END


End file.
